


We're not perfect, but we're getting there

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield Bonding, Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield Have a Good Relationship, Billy Hargrove Being Less of an Asshole, Billy Hargrove Tries to Be a Better Sibling, Bullying, Developing Friendships, Gen, Post-Season/Series 03, Protective Billy Hargrove, Protective Siblings, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, Step-siblings, Teenage Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 02:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21292076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Sometimes, even on bad days, the only person you need to make it all better is your big brother. And despite Billy being a complete and utter asshole and accidentally letting a monster possess him so he could destroy the world, he's still her big brother, and Max wouldn't want him any other way.They're getting better. Not quite perfect,  not yet, but she was sure that soon, in time, they would be. But for now, she would settle for what they had carefully cultivated over months of bonding and hardships after the near-destruction of the world and the annihilation of all humankind as they know it- warm.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Comments: 6
Kudos: 115





	We're not perfect, but we're getting there

**Author's Note:**

> I just need them to be close, damn it. I've been trying to write their relationship as a progression. From the first fic (Unwilling brother, reluctant sister) to now and hopefully all the fics that follow, they've been slowly getting closer and more like siblings, so I hope that's how it comes across.

Billy got home from work one day a lot later than usual, which meant that he didn’t get any moment of reprieve like he did every other time, because Neil was home before him, and he and Susan were sitting in the living room while they watched TV. Neil had a beer held loosely between his fingers, and Susan was flicking through one of those magazines that Max hated. They both looked up when Billy opened the door, and he preoccupied himself with slamming it shut and dumping his work bag in the corner to pretend that he hadn’t noticed. “You’re late,” Neil stated the blindingly obvious.

“New kids at the pool,” Billy didn’t offer an apology because he didn’t think Neil deserved it, but he thought it was best to offer an explanation before he lost his cool. And Billy really didn’t need that- it had been a long day. “Nobody’s taught them how to lock up the place yet, so I had to do overtime to make sure those dumb idiots didn’t get me sacked because I’m technically the senior member. I’ve been there the longest. I’m only one step down from the manager, at this point.”

He didn’t tell them that he’d just gotten a promotion to ‘senior supervisor’ or that he was basically more important than the manager or the owner of the place because neither of them was ever there, or that he’d been the employee of the month five months in a row. They didn’t need to know that, and he doubted that they’d actually care.

Susan seemed pleased with the half-hearted explanation and returned to her magazine, but Neil turned fully to face him, swinging his arm over the back of the couch see him standing by the door. “I don’t care why you were late, but I had to go get Max from school because you were late picking her up.”

Billy couldn’t help but frown. “Why didn’t she skate home? I’m sure she had her board with her, and she’s done it plenty of other times.”

Before Neil could answer, his mouth contorting in outrage, Susan spoke up, her voice sweet yet saddened. “She’s been having trouble with some kids at school. She didn’t feel safe walking home on her own, so the school called us up and told us that she’d be waiting in the front office for one of us to get her.”

“Trouble?” Billy asked slowly, and for a moment, he felt like the floor was falling out from under him. “With which kids?”

“Who the fuck knows which kids? Who cares?” Neil scoffed, frustrated at the turn the conversation had taken. “It’s normal. She’s a teenager- she’d better get used to people treating her like crap because it only gets worse from here on out. But you were late, and I don’t care about what kind of excuses you’ve got in the bank, I don’t want it to happen again, understand me?”

“Yes sir,” Billy wasn’t even listening to the words Neil was saying any more, but he’d learned enough lessons by now to answer on his cue. “Never again. Is Max home?”

Neil looked like he was about to say something, but Susan sent him a dangerous look and he shut his mouth, turning back around and watching the moving figures on the TV again. “She’s in her room,” she told Billy, a very sad look on her face. “I haven’t seen her since she got home though. Maybe someone needs to go and check on her, give her a... pep-talk?”

It was obvious that Susan was hoping that Billy would volunteer to go, but he didn’t need any prompting, because he was already on his way in that direction. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Max’s bedroom door was closed, and he could hear soft music coming from the inside, and he gently knocked on the wood. “Max? You in there?”

He heard shuffling and the sound of something toppling over, and then Max’s muffled voice calling, “You can come in, if you want, Billy.”

Tentatively, Billy opened the door and stepped inside. Normally, he wouldn’t be so worried about entering Max’s room, and before everything had happened with the mall and the Mind Flayer, he wouldn’t have even bothered to knock first, but something told him that it would be better for him to tread carefully than to just barge in like he usually did. Besides, they were much closer now than they were before, and he was trying not to be as much of a dick, at least not to her.

She was kneeling on the ground beside her bed, a brown box on her lap, wearing his leather jacket that he wasn’t allowed to wear to work, and she was carefully gathering up cassette tapes that were scattered across the floor. They were his tapes, he realized belatedly, and the soft song that was playing from the cassette player he had brought her for her birthday was his Journey album from 1981 and Believer was playing on a low volume throughout the room. “I dropped them,” she explained when he wasn’t the first to speak. “I jumped when you knocked and the box slid off the end of the bed. I don’t think any are damaged, though. Sorry.”

He shut the door behind him and slowly crept into the room. “Don’t sweat it,” he said as he sat on the edge of her bed. “How about you stop with that? They’re not going to go anywhere. You can pick them up later. Come and... and sit up here with me.”

Reluctantly, Max sat beside Billy on the bed, her hands in her lap, her head down and her long hair covering her face. Billy felt a little awkward, actually, now that he was here, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do, but Max just looked so defeated and dejected and heartbroken that Billy knew he had to do something, say something, even if he did feel like he had his foot in his mouth a little bit. Max didn’t offer up any information on her own, so Billy licked his lips and said, “So-”

“It’s not my fault,” Max interrupted immediately as if Billy had opened up the floodgate. “I only punched him because he was calling me a nerd and told me I was a freak because of the colour of my hair, and then he started trying to take my board, so what else would you have wanted me to do? I shouldn’t be the one getting in trouble; I only broke his nose because he was being a fucking _prick_!”

Frowning, Billy looked at Max like she had just started sprouting Spanish. “Who was this?”

“That asshole Michael Colton,” Max huffed, crossing her arms in pure frustration across her chest. “I tried to ignore him, but he just kept following me and taunting me, and then he wouldn’t let me go home, so I hit him.”

“He called you a freak?” Billy tried to keep his voice even. “And tried to keep you from leaving?”

“Don’t tell me you’re disappointed with me too,” Her voice was thick with anger and pain at the same time, and Billy felt it somewhere in his soul.

Billy put a hand on his shoulder and was a little surprised when it wasn’t shrugged off. “Disappointed? You punched that prick in the face, Max; I’m not disappointed I’m _proud_.”

She made a strangled sound then and Max looked up at him with wide eyes. Her hair fell away from her face and she looked like she’d been crying. “Proud? Really? What for?”

“I’d have been more annoyed if you’d just shut up and taken it instead of fighting back,” Billy had to laugh- she couldn’t really think that he’d be upset with her, could she? “I hope he needs stitches or something. I’d be happy with a broken nose.”

Max laughed, her cheeks blushing with pride. “There was so much blood, Billy, you should have seen it. He started screaming and everything.”

“Good, the dick deserved it.” Billy’s words were genuine. “Do you want to tell me what happened? I mean, without all the screaming and yelling and stuff.”

Immediately, Max closed off again, and her shoulders hunched over. “He kept following me in the courtyard at recess,” She began. “And then after school, he started teasing me. Said that having red hair made me a freak and that I was a nerd for hanging out with Mike and Lucas and Dustin and Will. They said that real girls don’t play DnD and hang out with boys. And then they started talking shit about you, and how everyone was scared of you and how you’re the worst, and then I just... punched him.”

“Wait, hold up,” the cranks in Billy’s mind were turning in overdrive. “Did you punch him for making fun of you, or did you punch him for talking about me?”

For a few moments, the only sound was the gentle notes of Journey playing in the background. Max licked her lips. “Both,” she admitted eventually. “I thought I could take it when it was talking about me but... nobody talks like that about my brother.” She looked back up at Billy then, and he realized that she was being absolutely serious.

“Oh,” Billy said softly once he’d realized. He’d never... nobody had ever done that for him before, defended his honour when he wasn’t even around. Those kids had probably been right, anyway. But Max hadn’t cared- she just cared that they were talking smack about him, and she wasn’t going to sit there and take it. “Oh. Are you... going to get in trouble for punching him?”

“I think so,” Max groaned, leaning into Billy’s side, and he was so surprised that he almost pushed her away before he decided against it and wrapped his arms around her instead. “She said that unless someone can go in there to explain why I don’t deserve it, then I’ll be getting detention.”

Billy knew that neither Neil nor Susan would bother to go all the way down to the school to do that for her, and also knew that she didn’t deserve that detention, no matter what any busy-body adult said. “I’m picking you up from school tomorrow,” he said before he could talk himself out of it. But once the words left his mouth, they just felt so right that he couldn’t ever imagine him taking them back.

“What- no,” Max looked surprised. “You’ve got work tomorrow, and don’t you have to be there to keep up the streak you have for the employee of the month? Someone has to be there to teach the newbies how to lock up.”

Billy waved her off. “I couldn’t care less about the employee of the month. I’ll just take the day off, and if Helga really can’t deal with showing the new people how to run the place when nobody else is there then she really shouldn’t be hiring them.”

Max looked like she was on the verge of tears. “Billy, come on, you really don’t have to.”

“Hey,” Billy shrugged. “It’s not as if I’ve got anything better to do, anyway.”

Defeated, Max slumped back against Billy’s side, but this time he was prepared for her, and he held her close to his chest before she could roll off the bed. She rested her head against his chest, her hair tickling his skin and the leather jacket making an uncomfortable squeaking noise, and she closed her eyes. She could have almost been asleep, except for the lack of snoring. “Do you remember when you and I used to hate each other?” she said suddenly, her voice barely anything but a breath on the wind, her eyes still closed and peaceful. “And you would try to kill my friends for a joke, and liked beating the crap out of people, and you were so unhappy that you accidentally let a monster possess you to take over the world? What the fuck happened to that?”

He wasn’t quite sure how to answer that, so he tentatively raised his hand and began stroking his fingers through his hair. He wasn’t quite used to having a loving relationship with his sister, but he was getting there, and so far they were much closer than they ever had been. “Do you want to sleep with the jacket on?” he asked instead, and she didn’t seem to mind or notice how he changed the subject.

“Yeah, that’d be good,” she said. Sometimes, on bad nights, she liked to have something of Billy’s with her to remind her that everything was still ok. Sometimes, after a nightmare, it was the necklace his mother had given him before she disappeared with the face of Saint Christopher engraved on its silver surface. Sometimes it was his jacket, just so she could remind herself that he was still alive, and that he hadn’t actually died back on the floor of the mall, and that he’d gotten better. Sometimes she sat in his car for a little bit of privacy, knowing that he would come and find her when she was ready and take her for a drive without question. She liked how close they were getting- it wasn’t perfect, not yet, but they were getting there. “Billy?” she asked. He hummed. “Could you... could you stay here for a little bit longer?”

He snorted and held her closer to his chest. “I can stay here all night if you want me too.”

“Yeah,” Max sighed lightly. “That sounds nice.”

The leather jacket was way too big for her in all proportions- the sleeves hung low over her hands and Billy had to roll them up for her to be able to use her fingers, it hung off of her thin frame because her shoulders didn’t fill it out and if she zipped it up she looked like a really bad Halloween costume of a rubbish bag- but that didn’t stop her from wearing it over her clothes the next day and in the car the whole way to school. When Billy parked in the car park, a couple of minutes before the bell rang for the first period, Max didn’t move. “I’ll pick you up,” Billy said awkwardly to try and break the silence. “If you don’t see me, just wait in the office, but I’ll be here.”

“What if I run into Michael and his friends again?” she asked, staring out the window. “What if they follow me around the school and start teasing me like they did yesterday?”

Billy turned around in the driver’s seat to face her and poked her in the chest to get her attention. “If that happens, then I want you to do a lot worse than break his nose.”

Max smiled, and slowly, almost reluctantly, she began to unzip Billy’s jacket. “I hope you were being serious about picking me up, because I didn’t bring my skateboard, and I don’t really want to push my luck with calling Neil up to come and get me two days in a row.”

“I’ll be here,” Billy was too busy trying to make a decision to listen to what she was saying, but eventually he put his larger hand on hers and made her pause in removing the jacket. “You know what? Keep it on. You can wear it to school today.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yeah, I don’t really need it,” Billy reassured. But then his face turned serious, and the pocking on her chest was more insistent. “Don’t lose it, don’t rip it, and don’t get it dirty. You do that, and we’re golden.”

Snorting, Max pulled the zip back up to her chin, and she looked so happy that Billy didn’t have the heart to tell her how stupid she looked. “Thanks, Billy. You’re... you’re the best.”

Billy tried not to smile- he actually hadn’t ever heard that before, and it sounded... pretty good, honestly. He reached over and ruffled her hair roughly to try and get the attention away from him. “It looks good on you. Now scram- you’re going to be late for class, and I don’t want to find out that I’m taking a day off from earning cold hard cash for you to muck around.”

As if she just tuned out the rest of his mock-threatening statement, Max scrunched up her nose and said, determined and a little cheeky. “No, it doesn’t,” before grabbing her bag from the back seat and running towards the school just as the bell rang to announce the start of first-class.

He stayed in the car park all day, reading the magazines he kept in the glove box for ‘emergencies’ and kept one eye on the random passes. Sometimes someone got too close to his car, and Billy would glare at them until they got the hint and wandered away. He also made sure to spare some time to go inside the front office and persuade the lady manning the desk that his sister didn't really need detention and that she had learned her lesson and that she should just be let off with a warning. It was only when the bell sounded for the end of the day that he turned on his engine and drove away, knowing that by the time he drove to the 7-11 around the corner to get Max her favourite flavour of slushy and back to the school again, she probably wouldn’t have even gotten out of class yet, so he waited as long as he could so the slushy wouldn’t be melted by the time she got to it.

As always, he was right, of course. He had parked the car, pulled out a cigarette from the box he kept in his car and leant against the hood while he enjoyed the smoke burning and curling around his fingers, and she still hadn’t arrived. She was one of the last kids to leave, Billy reckoned, and when he finally did catch her leaving the school from the front office, the black leather jacket a stark contrast from her red hair and pink patterned pants, he was _almost_ surprised to see her being followed by a gaggle of at least four kids, and none of them was Dustin or Mike or Will or Lucas.

When she caught sight of him, parked at the school just like he promised, her fast walk speed up to a run, a relieved look on her face. When she reached him, she tugged on his sleeve and tried to pull him into the car. “Come on Billy, that’s them, let’s go, please can we go?”

“Not yet,” Billy said as the kids started getting closer. He took another puff of his cigarette and held it in his lungs for a moment before he said, “How about you wait in the car? I got you your favourite slushy?”

“Billy,” for the first time, Max looked afraid, but that fear wasn’t directed at Billy. At least, he didn’t think so. If it was fear of Billy, he didn’t think it was fear _for_ her. He hoped not. “What are you going to do?”

Billy shrugged. “I haven’t actually decided yet. I guess we’ll just go along with it, huh?”

Instead of getting into the car as Billy suggested, Max waited with him outside the car until all four boys joined them in the car park, and she clenched her fists around the too-long ends of Billy’s jacket. The boys watched her intently, and Billy thought it was about time he made a good first impression, “Hey, pig head,” he called to the boy in the front, who he could only assume was this Michael kid, and they all turned to look at him. “The names Billy. Billy Hargrove. Maybe you’ve heard of me- you’ve probably heard of me.” He turned slightly to wave at Max with the hand that held his cigarette. “And this is my darling little sister Max. I know for a fucking fact that you know all about her.”

Michael had a bandage tapped across his bruised and puffy nose, and he looked between Max and Billy with hungry yet weary eyes. “Everyone in Hawkins has heard of you,” Michael spat- actually spat, thick globules of it slipped from his lips and splattered to the floor between them. “Used to be the new tough guy but now you spend all your time babysitting spoiled brats. What the hell happened to you?”

Wiping a hand across his face to get rid of the splatter of spit, Billy couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “First of all, I hope you’re not confusing me with the actual babysitter Steve Harington, because that would just be embarrassing. And secondly, the fact that you do actually know who I am, means that you fucked up on purpose, which was a really, really stupid idea on your part.”

“Billy, don’t kill them,” Max said from behind him. Billy wasn’t looking at her, so he wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not, but either way, she was defiantly helping his cause.

“Get in the car,” Billy called over his shoulder. “Please? Max?”

The group of boys started snickering as Max slowly slid into the passenger’s seat and Billy turned back. “_Please_?” One of them laughed. “Can you believe people used to be afraid of this guy? Who the hell begs Max for anything?”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Billy took a long drag from his cigarette as he thought of what to say, and he blew it out right into Michael’s face, and he turned away, couching and spluttering, spraying more spit everywhere. “Here’s how this is going to go down. You’re going to leave Max alone, or you’re going to have to start answering to me and believe me, you don’t want any part of that.”

When Michael finally got air back into his lungs, he turned to Billy with a red-eyed glare. “Why the hell do you think we’re scared of you?”

“Because you should be,” Billy replied seriously. “And the fact that you’re not, means that you have no idea how scary I can be.” He took a step forward and the satisfying effect was that the boys took a hasty step back.

“We should go, man,” One of the boys hissed. “It’s not worth it.”

Billy continued, dropping his cigarette on the floor and grounding it out with his boot. “I don’t know what kind of sick satisfaction you get from picking on my sister, but let me tell you, you’re not the only one who likes that kind of stuff. I like hurting people until they cry, and then I hurt them more. And believe me, kid, you don’t scare me. But you should be very scared because you’ve hurt Max- and now you’ll have to pay. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but you better believe that you’re time is coming. Because nobody, and I mean _nobody_, picks on my sister except _me_.”

He watched them intently as they slowly backed away without a word and then ran off as fast as their little legs could take them. Satisfied that the problem was dealt with, Billy got back into the car and acted as if nothing had happened, but Max was staring at him with wide eyes over her slushy, her lips a pale blue. “Woah,” she said, awestruck. “Did you mean all that?”

“Who knows?” With a short shrug, Billy started the engine. “Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on if they mess with you again.”

“You’re the best, Billy,” Max laughed. “Although, I do have... one small complaint.”

As he pulled the car out of the car park, he turned to her with a raised eyebrow. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

Balancing her cup between her legs, Max raised her hands and put two fingers on each hand in the air as quotation markers. “'My darling little sister’? What the hell was that?”

“Oh- shut up,” Billy rolled his eyes with a laugh as he shoved her, and she barely managed to recover herself long enough not to spill her drink all over the pristine inside of his Camaro. "What about you, miss damsel in distress?" He put on a high pitched, girly tone of voice. 'Oh Billy, please don't kill them, Billy'. What kind of theatrical bullshit was that?"

Her laugh was the sweetest thing Billy had ever heard, and he knew right then that he would do anything to hear it again.


End file.
